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Quotes About Forgiveness

No, really: I can't fight, I never could. I can't bring myself to dislike anyone enough.
~ George Bernard Shaw
When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.
~ George Bernard Shaw
I don't want to punish anybody, but there are an extraordinary number of people who I might want to kill.
~ George Bernard Shaw
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself
~ George Bernard Shaw
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
~ George Bernard Shaw
the world will forgive you for the sake of your blazing boyishness. (Written to Lord Alfred Douglas)
~ George Bernard Shaw
It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.
~ George Eliot
When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.
~ George Eliot
Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.
~ George Eliot
Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated blame; she had been blamed her whole life, and nothing had come of it but evil tempers.
~ George Eliot
I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest—I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.
~ George Eliot
It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.
~ George Eliot
Who with repentance is not satisfied, is not of heaven, nor earth.
~ George Eliot
She had forgotten his faults as we forget the sorrows of our departed childhood.
~ George Eliot
there are always people who can't forgive an able man for differing from them.
~ George Eliot
As Celia bent over the paper, Dorothea put her cheek against her sister's arm caressingly. Celia understood the action. Dorothea saw that she had been in the wrong, and Celia pardoned her. Since they could remember, there had been a mixture of criticism and awe in the attitude of Celia's mind towards her elder sister. The younger had always worn a yoke, but is there any yoked creature without its private opinions?
~ George Eliot
I only thought of myself, and I made you grieve. It hurts me now to think of your grief. You must not grieve anymore for me. It is better_it shall be better with me because I have known you.
~ George Eliot
He was doctrinally convinced that there was a total absence of merit in himself; but that doctrinal conviction may be held without pain when the sense of demerit does not take a distinct shape in memory and revive the tingling of shame or the pang of remorse. Nay, it may be held with intense satisfaction when the depth of our sinning is but a measure for the depth of forgiveness, and a clenching proof that we are peculiar instruments of the divine intention.
~ George Eliot
It is hard to say how much we could forgive ourselves if we were secure from judgment by another whose opinion is the breathing-medium of all our joy—who brings to us with close pressure and immediate sequence that judgment of the Invisible and Universal which self-flattery and the world's tolerance would easily melt and disperse. In this way our brother may be in the stead of God to us, and his opinion which has pierced even to the joints and marrow, may be our virtue in the making.
~ George Eliot
I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest — I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much. But I should like to see Mr. Farebrother and hear him preach.
~ George Eliot
have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest—I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.
~ George Eliot
It would be very petty of us who are well and can bear things, to think much of small offences from those who carry a weight of trial.
~ George Eliot
Don't ask me, Adam, Arthur said; I feel sometimes as if I should go mad with thinking of her looks and what she said to me, and then, that I couldn't get a full pardon—that I couldn't save her from that wretched fate of being transported—that I can do nothing for her all those years; and she may die under it, and never know comfort any more.
~ George Eliot
Arthur would so gladly have persuaded himself that he had done no harm! And if no one had told him the contrary, he could have persuaded himself so much better. Nemesis can seldom forge a sword for herself out of our consciences—out of the suffering we feel in the suffering we may have caused: there is rarely metal enough there to make an effective weapon.
~ George Eliot